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Sauce

Green Tomato Chili Sauce

A green tomato and pepper sauce with vinegar, spices, and optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Green Tomato Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the sliced green tomatoes, sliced onions, chopped green peppers, and coarse sea salt in an earthen dish and let sit overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture thoroughly and chop it into small pieces.

Cook and store

  1. Pour the cider vinegar over the chopped mixture, then add the mixed ground spice and brown sugar.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for 20 minutes, adding the red pepper pod until the desired spiciness is reached.

  3. Adjust salt to taste and store in a cool place in a tightly covered stone jar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its tart, fresh base flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables overnight, concentrating them and helping preserve the sauce.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps keep it stable in storage.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
White onions
Contribute savory depth and body to the chopped sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the salted mixture thoroughly. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions overnight. Leaving excess liquid in makes the sauce thin and dilutes the vinegar, so thorough draining helps it thicken and keeps the flavor concentrated.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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